Falguni A. Sheth writes: Iran has no intentions of attacking Israel. One obvious reason is that Iran has no plausible ability to attack Israel. As the erudite journalist and political analyst Nima Shirazi has documented carefully and exhaustively here, here, here, here, and perhaps crystallized most clearly here, Iran presents no threat, nuclear or otherwise, to Israel. None. Zilch. Nada. President Obama knows this. Shimon Peres knows this. Bibi knows this. As Shirazi writes:
Netanyahu deliberately ignored the fact that Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium remains far from weapons-grade and that Iran has, for over a year now, been systematically converting much of its 19.75% enriched stock to fuel plates that precludes the possibility of being diverted to military purposes.
Of course, the fact that Iran has an inalienable legal right to a fully-functioning nuclear energy program – including the indigenous mastery of the nuclear fuel cycle – was not addressed at all. For Netanyahu and his acolytes, any Iranian nuclear program is synonymous with a weapons program – and not only that, but a weapons program designed to “exterminate” Israel’s “Jewish people.” Facts remain irrelevant.
Hans Blix, the UN Inspector who repeatedly declared in 2002 that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, knows this (a fact that our liberal pundit class has only now come to acknowledge. See Beinart et al. above). He has again affirmed there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iran. As reported by an Australian news site, Blix insists:
“Memories of the failure and tragic mistakes in Iraq are not taken sufficiently seriously.”
“In the case of Iraq, there was an attempt made by some states to eradicate weapons of mass destruction that did not exist, and today there is talk of going on Iran to eradicate intentions that may not exist. I hope that will not happen.”
Today, Mr Blix believes that the international community has even less evidence of the existence of atomic weapons in Iran, which is facing international pressures over its controversial nuclear program.
Moreover, even senior Israeli officials with close ties to the intelligence community are unconvinced of Iran’s danger to the United States or to Israel:
Beyond being obvious that Iran poses literally no threat to the United States, numerous Israeli military and intelligence officials openly reject the notion that a nuclear-armed Iran would “present an existential threat to Israel.” Former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy recently told the UK Zionist Federation that Israel’s existence “is not in danger and shouldn’t be questioned.”
(ThinkProgress.org lists Israeli officials who are not concerned about Iran’s threat to Israel here.)
In essence, the increasingly menacing public posture of U.S. officials toward Iran — coming in the same month as the 10-year anniversary of the jingoistic, imperially smug, and devastatingly destructive invasion of Iraq — cannot but remind us of the spurious calls for war made back in 2002.
